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Mark Trail, 2/19/19

Hell yeah everyone, the seemingly eternal Mexican vacation is over and Chris “Dirty” Dyer is back and ready for revenge! “Dirty” was last seen lounging erotically on a beach somewhere almost a year ago in between bouts of knife-thorwing practice, and by all means follow that link for a bunch of other links that explain who he is and what his beef is with Mark, but the important thing is that “Dirty” has given up on knives and moved on to flamethrowers, and is now using one to melt what appears to be a simulation of Mark Trail, only blonde, and made out of … candle wax, maybe? Or plastic? A plastic mannequin devoid of emotions and genitals, much like Mark himself? Anyway, I hope this presages the final conflict between Mark and “Dirty”, but probably this glimpse is supposed to tide us over while we endure another 10 months of Mark writing a story about [spins wheel] endangered frogs and getting mixed up in a [spins wheel again] insurance fraud scheme.

Mary Worth, 2/19/19

Hell yeah once again everyone, the seemingly eternal Ian-Jannie plot is over and now Mary is back and gonna get her friend Estelle laid! Not sure what this bodes for Libby, who Mary only fobbed off on Estelle because she missed her dead husband, but we’ll deal with that when we need to! The important thing is that Estelle “miss[es] having a man around,” if you know what she means (she means sex). If fortysomething Iris can bed a 23-year-old millionaire, elegant Blythe Danner lookalike Estelle should at least be able to woo a 45-year-old with a steady job and health insurance.

Gil Thorp, 2/19/19

An interesting contrast between the public and private sectors here! It looks like yet another concerned citizen — the real customers of the Milford school district — has come to the conclusion that Gil Thorp sucks, but since Gil and everyone else at the school have cushy union jobs, they don’t have to respect anyone else’s opinion or even try to stop sucking! Meanwhile, in the cut-throat, free market world of sports radio focusing exclusively on high schools, B/Robby has already shown he can beat Marty Moon at the metrics the station owners care about, so he’s about to climb the corporate latter at Marty’s expense. The system works!

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Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! Which of today’s valentine-themed comics is the most depressing?

Blondie, 2/14/19

Is it Blondie, where the title character is an eternally youthful bombshell yet still needs to go to increasingly grotesque lengths to elicit the sexual interest of her food-obsessed husband?

Beetle Bailey, 2/14/19

Is it Beetle Bailey, where the title character has fallen asleep and his girlfriend is using him like a sex doll, but for feelings? (I somehow find the glass on the end table here particularly evocative; I assume Beetle, committed to never ingesting any stimulant that might impede his ability to doze off, took a few sips of room temperature tap water before slipping into blessed unconsciousness mid-date.)

Mark Trail, 2/14/19

Is it Mark Trail, where Cherry wistfully remembers the time where there were romance comic strips, the sort of comic strips where a character might get her emotional and physical needs met once in a while, you know?

Six Chix, 2/14/19

Is it Six Chix, where this lady is on a date with a sock puppet? You know, the extremely normal and relatable situation where you meet someone and they turn out to be a human arm inside a sock that has eyes sewed on it?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 2/14/19

In fact, to find true emotional fulfillment in today’s strips, we need to go beyond the world of traditional romantic attachment. For instance, imagine that you’re a ham radio operator who lives out in a desolate wasteland. Not a lot of opportunities to go on dates out there, of course. But now imagine a plane full of people suddenly arrives, their cell phones useless. They need to be able to communicate with the outside world somehow … using some kind of radio apparatus … perhaps one operated on an amateur basis. This is it. The moment has arrived. Other people dream about the day they stand at the altar, before their family and friends, to be united forever with their beloved. You’ve been dreaming about this.

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Mark Trail, 2/13/19

Well, it’s finally happening: newspaper revenues are plummeting so much that they’re resorting to desperate measures. Starting this month, every comic strip in the paper is going to have to dedicate at least three strips a month to having the main characters grinning and saying how much they love comic strips, and implying that talking to other people about comic strips is a great way to pique their interest in you, sexually.

Mary Worth, 2/13/19

Boy, Toby’s been worried about the state of her marriage, but it turns out that all that happened was that Ian became so sexually obsessed with a student who had only shown passing interest in him that he couldn’t figure out what kind of grade to give her even though she had failed to do any of her classwork! I bet Toby feels pretty silly, now.

Funky Winkerbean, 2/13/19

“Ha ha, get it? It’s funny because he doesn’t remember words any more, because of the brain damage! It’s OK to laugh — he’s not following any of this! His brain is pudding, and someday soon mine will be too!”